We went outside. And that was where we found Mark. He had come in first in sports but now he had reached the finish line. Somebody had been throwing the javelin and they’d thrown it at him. It had hit him in the chest. He was lying on the grass, doing a good impersonation of a sausage on a stick.

“It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .” Tim couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s Mark.” There were a few leaves scattered around his body. That puzzled me. The nearest trees were thirty feet away. But this wasn’t the time to play the detective. There were no more suspects. And only one more victim.

I looked at Tim.

Tim looked at me.

We were the only two left.

NEEDLES

Tim didn’t sleep well that night. Although I hadn’t said anything, not wanting to upset him, even he had managed to work out that he had to be the next on the killer’s list. He also knew that his own murder would have something to do with needlework. So he was looking for needles everywhere.

By one o’clock in the morning we knew that there were no sewing needles in the room, no knitting needles, and no pine needles. Even so, it took him an hour to get into bed and several more hours to get to sleep. Mind you, nobody would have found it easy getting to sleep dressed in a full suit of medieval armor, but that still hadn’t stopped Tim from putting it on.

“There could be a poisoned needle in the mattress,” he said. “Or someone could try and inject me with a syringe.”

Tim didn’t snore that night; he clanked. Every time he rolled over he sounded like twenty cans of beans in a washing machine. I just hoped he wasn’t planning to take a bath in the suit of armor the following morning. That way he could end up rusting to death.

At four-thirty, he woke up screaming.

“What is it, Tim?” I asked.

“I had a bad dream, Nick,” he said.

“Don’t tell me. You saw a needle.”

“No. I saw a haystack.”

I didn’t sleep well either. I got a cramp and woke up in the morning with pins and needles. I didn’t tell Tim, though. He’d have had a fit.